Release Notes for v5.1.0 (505089) - Second Life Viewer

Release Notes

This project rebuilds the viewer using 64bit address space. It is our hope that this will improve viewer stability, allow you to use more of the memory in your system (if you have more than 4GB), and possibly also improve performance.

This release has not yet been extensively tested; we are making it available somewhat earlier in the development cycle than usual so that you can help us find any subtle problems and measure the effect on viewer crashes.

There is no Linux viewer yet.

However, there are two Windows viewers, a 32-bit build and a 64-bit build. At present, you must choose the correct one for your system:

If you use an HD 2000 or 3000 series video card on Windows 10, choose 32 bit

Otherwise, choose the one that matches your copy of Windows (if your computer can run 64bit, and most can, you will get better performance and fewer crashes running a 64 bit Windows and Viewer).

One peculiarity with supporting two Windows builds is that until we fix our automated update machinery (coming soon!), it will update your 64-bit Windows viewer to a 32-bit viewer. Irksome as that is for the time being, it's better than the alternative, unconditionally updating every Alex Ivy Windows viewer to 64 bits -- presumably some users _cannot_ run a 64-bit viewer. Again, this will be fixed before we go to Release Candidate.

The Mac build has several known limitations:

We no longer support 32-bit Macs

Video media (QuickTime) usually does not play (the media handling is now the same as the Windows viewer).

The volume of web based media (e.g. YouTube) doesn't change based on your distance from the source.

This new build resolves more crashes, includes fixes for a number of bugs (E.G. media volume distance attenuation was broken in Windows, the viewer did not start on Windows 8.1) and re-introduces Havok for the Mac so pathfinding visualizing and mesh uploads should now work. Thanks to Nicky Dasmijn for contributions!